Another sterotype about writers is that we are egomaniacs. It must require a modicum of pig-headedness to put yourself out there and let’s not forget the bragging rights when you see your name on bookshelves and Kindle bestseller lists. If total ego comes into your writing your work becomes insufferable, but also accept that good writing will not occur without a defined sense of self. From this sense of self springs confidence and focus.

I meet writers who prefer to tread water and never muster the resolve to either dive deep to start swimming in a certain direction. You may have met them too – the ones who still have ideas for novels, short stories, and scripts but are still “trying them out.”, the ones still sorting through their notes for the last ten years, or aspirants who still view writing as a hobby.

If  writing is intergral to you existence it’s not a hobby! Do you tell family and friends that breathing is a pastime?! Or you will only exhale when you have spare time?

Art is your life-support system and not life is your art-support system.

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.

William S. Burroughs (LAST WORDS: THE FINAL JOURNALS OF WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS)

Here’s my rather grisly contribution to the Race to 200 Blog Contest.  (Author’s note– no disrespect or irreverence is intended towards any spiritual beliefs or culture. This story is based on a real practice that was isolated to a certain group of monastic practitioners in the Japan of the 1800s…)

You cannot meditate when your master is buried alive beside his rival. During my vigil with two other novices, I shivered but not because of the mountain wind.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Three years ago outside the dojo, my master Bhasho, and Soseki would posture like a pair of ronin. Wielding no swords in their daily duel but we all knew the power of words to cut and stab.

“One must be like tea.” proclaimed Soseki, “Adaptable and fluid. If tea is poured into a cup, it becomes the cup. When poured into the ladle, it becomes the ladle-”

“If tea is poured into the latrine, what does it become?” interjected Bhasho to much laughter.

Our abbot Horioka, did not encourage their rivalry, neither did he dissuade it. He was too busy receiving officials and magistrates or gifts from officials of the Yamagata prefecture. Behind closed screens and the rustle of robed weight settling on tatami mats,they talked of the gaijin spreading their religion. The abbott announced that we needed to strengthen ours.

“Many have tried, but few succeeded in the Shokushinbutsu method.” said Horioka in the courtyard,after we had breakfasted on miso and potato broth. A wave of awe . The method entails slow suicide and self-mummification to attain nirvana.

“I’ll do it!” yelled Bhasho. Miso and potato chunks threatened to burst up through my throat.

Not to be outdone, Soseki echoed Bhasho, “I’ll do it too!”

I stood by Bhasho during the first thousand days. While he ate pine cones and drank foul bitter tea made from the sap of urushi, the lacquer tree. I held his head as he vomited, stomach fluids dangling from his lips. Two thousand days later and near his end, Bhasho lay on his mat, gazing up at the rafters and scrawled his words on rice paper.

“I could come back. The gajin say the son of their god died and returned in three days.”

I ignore him. He sounds like Ikkuyu, the renegade monk from two hundred years ago.

“You’ll leave this world.” I said, ” In peace.”

His laugh set off a cough. More phelgm as if his emaciated body wants to turn itself inside out.

“What is ‘leaving’? I’ve hardly arrived!”

“Master Soseki says he will die and reach nirvana first. They’re preparing his tomb, next to yours.”

“He is most welcome, the old fool. It’s not a race but a test of endurance. He who lasts longest, attains nirvana!”

Did Bhasho hear me? I try not to raise my voice. ” You and Master Soseki will ring a bell in your respective tombs once a day to tell us that you’re still alive. After that stage passes, we’ll process your bodies and place them in the great hall.”

He nodded three times to show he had heard me.

My vigil outside their tombs was tortuous and arduous but we are monks – we thrive on routine. One novice keeps a tally of each Masters’ bell rings while the other acts as a witness. We took turns sleeping but when I slept I only heard the bell: Ding. Ding. Ding.

After ten days, the novices woke me up. “It is done.”

“Who died first?”

Both looked at me and then at each other. “Both of their bells stopped during the hour of the Stork today.”

Abbot Horioka smiled and clapped when I whispered the result into his ear over breakfast. “In Zen, there’s no winning or losing. But retrieve Master Bhasho first and put him in the hall. He has served us longer here. I want the pilgrims to see him.”

Bhasho, donning a topi and decked in his robes, sat stooped on an altar in the great hall. His eye sockets were empty and his hands  folded in his lap. But he seemed at peace. It was evening when I finally swept the hall and polished the prayer bell on the main altar.

“So,” I said to Master Bhasho’s corpse, “You and Soseki agreed on a draw?”

I bowed once and turned to exit the great hall.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

This is happening this week in Singapore:

So 2010 has come and gone, and much to my disappointment with Arthur C. Clarke, we did not make contact. However, an envoy for alien communication was appointed by the UN, so close enough.

Its that time of the year again! Halloween is a season for carnivalesque safe scares; you pays your money, enter the ghost-train ride and emerge on the other side unscathed. The ride is easily forgotten and the memory is disposable, whereas a great horror story (errrrmm)…haunts you.

Alison Flood’s article article in The Guardian set me thinking about horror/supernatural fiction. Readers cite the usual horror suspects (King, Poe, Shirley Jackson…) but I remember as a reader that my literary scares came from reading short stories in old anthologies borrowed from libraries or unearthed in clearance book sales. I discovered new names and old names; wonderful tales by one-hit wonders and stories by writers that you’d normally would not associate with horror/ supernatural fiction.

Some of these old anthologies  are long out of print, but links to more available editions  are included where possible.

1)  ”Not Exactly Ghosts”  Andrew Caldecott (Wordsworth Editions 2007)
Sir Andrew Caldecott is better known as a diplomat and ex-governor of Hong Kong and Singapore. His administrative legacy endures (Mediacorp, the home of Singapore Broadcasting, resides on Caldecott Hill) but his literary legacy is criminally underrated. Buy this if you want subtle early 20th-Century ghost stories, where mundane objects like a water pump, a pair of trousers and a church organ are haunted .

2)“The Party” “The Partnership” William F. Nolan
What? Horror from one of the writers of “Logan’s Run”? I had to struggle to put the 1976 movie out of my head, Nolan writes superb dark psychological tales and “The Party” was as chosen by Newsweek as one of the top ten most effective horror stories. ”The Partnership” is an unsettling sample of American Gothic that was adapted for the anthology TV series “Darkroom” in 1980. Now I want a copy of “Logan’s Run” because the book is much grittier and deserves better, before Hollywood got its mitts on it for the movie.

3)”Video Nasty” Phillip Pullman (1996). Published in “The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories” edited by Peter Haining (Mammoth Books 2007)

Yes, dear reader you read the name correctly. Mr. Pullman, of “Northern Lights” fame . Just like its title, “Video Nasty” is an unmercifully visceral short ghost story that raises more troubling questions than answers. Parallels between ‘The Ring’ are merely coincidental (it was written 3 years before the Japanese film version hit mainstream Western audiences)

4) The Machine Stops E.M Forster
A dystopian science-fiction story by one of the foremost critics of science-fiction. This is not a horror story but I urge you not to shudder at Forster’s vision of future humans reduced to fungoid growths by their slavish dependence on technology.

5) The Lamp Agatha Christie(1933). Published in“The Hound of Death and other stories”  (Harper Collins Ltd)
The Queen of Crime also reigns supreme as a ghost story writer . Poignant and eerie, “The Lamp” has a unique atmosphere that does not disperse, even when you have switched on all the lights.

6) All But Empty Graham Greene
A murder is connected to an afternoon matinee attended by only two people. Invariably, there is a twist ending but *what* a twist it is.

7) Close Behind Him John Wyndham
In his famous novels such as ‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’, Wyndham created his own genre of ‘logical fantasy’ and he applies the same precise structuring and prose to this story of murder avenged.

8) The Ball Room, China Mieville “Looking For Jake and Other Stories” (Pan, 2006)
Can China Mieville’s prose hack it in a real-world setting? It does and you almost wish he wrote more contemporary fiction. You will never dare go near a children’s play area after reading this.

9) The Dancing Partner Jerome K. Jerome
The author of the classic comic novel “Three Men In a Boat” displays a rarely-seen warped sense of humour in this tale of a toy dancing-partner that *never* wants to stop dancing.

10) The Signalman Charles Dickens
Incisive social commentary of Victorian England? Check. Effortless lucid prose from a master writer? Check. Eccentric ghosts a la “A Christmas Carol”? Absent. A disturbing ending that ensures sleeping with all the lights on? Present.

Other suggestions/ additions to this list? Comment below thank you